And, what does that have to do with the fact that Wikileaks has deleted all information from the site that is not directly about the United States. Did you miss that part or are you too stupid to read?
If you didn't have less intellectual capacity than a turnip you wouldn't jump to conclusions based on your fanciful interpretations. People like you were accusing such conspiracies last time round too, until the documents were put back up within a few weeks.
The fact is that the site has had hosting problems due to the huge amount of interest it has generated and is undergoing some severe restructuring.
Sure. 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008. And, I can name one for the future: 2012.
Lol. If you think pompous speeches and defamations that go on in the mainstream media or even congress for that matter count as foreign policy I really do pity you.
The elected officials are not authoritarian, therefore your question is moot.
Hitler won elections too you know. Some characteristics of authoritarianism: exclusive and unaccountable. That pretty much seems to completely characterize American foreign policy.
And, no one is demanding complete secrecy.
Well, you are for one. As well as everyone else who calls for severe punishment and condemnation of the sources and journalists rather than the crooked officials they exposes.
You, however, seem to be demanding a seat at every diplomatic discussion and to be CC on every single communication within the government.
Ironically it was the intelligence community that demanded this and that's what caused this whole fiasco in the first place. No, I wouldn't want to eliminate highly trusted interpersonal communication (you're extremely naive if you believe these leaked documents contain such highly sensitive stuff). But, unlike you, when information does leak and crooks are exposed I don't think that assumed confidentiality can be a defence.
You do not address the primary statement in my post, namely that the only reason these cables were released was to embarrass the U.S. and damage the international relationships of the U.S.
I considered it unnecessary flamebait on your behalf. How schizophrenic must one be to believe such shit? Assange released information which is highly useful for U.S. citizens. The Pentagons anti-democratic with-us-or-against-us mentality would like to steer your thoughts elsewhere of course
The fact that the only data on Wikileaks involves the U.S. is strong evidence of same.
It's actually pretty shitty evidence for your assertion. Anybody the least bit informed would know that the big releases over this last year originated from one source and there has been considerable effort to involve large journals in releasing this bulk of information.
And, where are the documents from France, Russia, China, etc? Or do we not need more open debate about THEIR geopolitical goals and intentions?
We certainly do. But the fact is that France's foreign policy is not a colossal authoritarian game of chess like the US has. Russia and China seem to keep their secrets better.
As for your last paragraph, let me know when you get a chance to discuss alliances with a foreign head of state. The fact is we elect a government to do those very things.
Really now! Can you even name me one American election in which foreign policy was a primary concern? Are you demanding secrecy after the authoritarian officials have been elected? Because that is highly anti-democratic.
Oh come on! Do you seriously think that the unflattering comments by junior diplomats about a few numbskull politicians who have certainly heard worse are really going to damage diplomatic ties?
What is far more interesting is the insight we get into US diplomacy. These will certainly be some of the most extensive historical documents ever released.
There are basically two approaches: a closed and secretive foreign policy or an open and democratic one. If you believe that wars and alliances are something best left exclusively to Presidents and ministers then you'll oppose Wikileaks, but if you think we need more open debate about our geopolitical goals an intentions, you will support Assange and Wikileaks.
It's a perfectly correct analysis, especially when you're talking about cannibalising sales. It doesn't address the numerous shortcomings that Apple keep incrementally improving functionality to that which is taken for granted in this day and age.
Do you really think I am this dense, that I do not KNOW that gold standard does not preclude banks from lending out deposits and only holding fractions? Seriously? For real?
That's not what I meant. You seem to be under the impression that for every Dollar in circulation in 1850 there was a dollars worth of silver locked up in a safe. That certainly was not the case. Your fanciful re-imagining of 19th century banking doesn't change this.
Isn't this a gigantic fallacy on your part, not knowing anything about me or about my investments to come with this 'conclusion'?
Would you then care to explain how a gold market crash would not only devalue your gold deposits but also render some of the questionably viable gold mining operations that exist unprofitable? Would you care to explain why mining companies are inherently safer than any other business?
you should definitely teach me, oh the great one. Did you own any Internet stocks in the nineties? I didn't. I guess I was the silly one then as well. However those people who did, lost pretty much all of it while my commodities only went up in value.
Considering you see you success by speculation in the housing bubble to be a paramount example of your wisdom, maybe you should have bought some and sold them when they were high.
I guess me noticing that to get out of that recession the gov't did the wrong thing and pushed the interest rates to 1%, I guess I was wrong then, to understand that it would cause another, bigger bubble in real estate? I guess the fact that I bought 3 houses in the beginning of two thousand, renovated them, held onto them and sold them pretty much before the housing bubble blew up and loaded up on gold again, yeah, that makes me totally ignorant on the way the inflation by government causes asset bubbles.
Having won one round of speculation might boost your confidence but it sure as hell doesn't mean you're right. The very fact that gold is seen as a safe reserve allows it to withstand stock market crashes. So while it does have some interesting peculiarities, that doesn't mean the gold price can't bubble and crash.
Gold standard != 100% reserved currency. This seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding you have. The 19th cenury banking system was based on fractional reserves as was any serious attempt at banking in modern times. We had a gold-standard up until 1972. But, just as in the 19th century there is no way that all wealth corresponded to gold coins that were locked up somewhere. I can't begin to conceive what naive thinking makes you believe that constantly falling prices are a macroeconomic benefit.
You also seem to be drastically misinformed about the nature of gold mining shares. While one might naively assume the price of a mining company to rise as gold prices rise, the company doesn't actually represent any metal beyond it's current inventory. The actual value of the company depends on the profitability of the mining operation itself as well as how mining rights are awarded and will be awarded in the future. Guess who gets to decide this? Yep, it's a big bad government. The mining sector is by no means a safe industry to invest in. The 101 of financial investment is to distribute your assets across diverse industries to resist sector crashes.
Holding on to gold while the rest of the world is out investing in the future sure isn't the safest thing to do. If you want to compare historical gold prices you really have to look at inflation or CPI-adjusted charts like this one: http://www.financialsensearchive.com/metals/cpiadjusted.html If that's something you want to bet your entire livelihood on then all I can do is wish you luck.
What the heck are you talking about that there can be no real growth of economy without fractional reserve?
Fractional reserve banking creates money for every loan people take, with the assumption that there is a chance that loan will result in positive investment, creating new goods.
Take away the ability to loan money and fix your currency to a near-static commodity like gold, then there is no way to expand the money supply to value the newly created goods. Instead it drains money from a previously balanced economy. The People all clamour for the same pot of gold which can only grow at the mining rate for gold (and also btw. happens to be hugely dependant on the matrimonal situation on the indian subcontinent) rather than making investments without worrying about an arbitrary metal.
As to you suggestion we could replace the entire financial system with direct personal investment deals for every citizen, that's just bat-shit-crazy.
Well, those were banks that loaned out the gold, they had fractional reserve of gold, they were not safe boxes in the real sense of the word.
Exactly. Which is why your notion that 19th century economy = fully reserved liquid assets is completely bullshit. Without fractional reserve banking there can be not interest rates and no bank loans. Heck, there would hardly be a reason for banks to exist. The point is that the 19th century currencies worked a lot like they do now. Except that you had to worry about the market of some metals along with all the other factors.
But in reality the bank runs were a very small problem, this problem was overblown by the US gov't, when they introduced the FDIC to help their banking friends to get more customers, that was helping the banking monopolies to hold on to the market with less competition and without having to earn the trust of the people. That was the moral hazard, which became part of the reason for the latest financial crash, since the Steagall was removed but FDIC stayed in place.
Wait a second. You argue against fiat money because of it's supposed instability, and then suggest we take back measures that stabilise the system and allow banks to decide their reserves for themselves?
Extremes are always bad. There's a good balance between money being bad to save and money being bad to spend. Generally it's around 2%, about the same as economic growth.
Bank notes are backed by gold or whatever commodity you prefer, like silver or corn or cotton.
The point is that you can't print cotton or corn or silver or gold. First of all there is real work involved in actually producing/mining these commodities, secondly they cannot be produced/mined without restrained, that's just not happening.
Cash, on the other hand, can be printed without any limits and it is.
You are mistaken. I'm talking about the typical 19th century bank note. The type you got from a particular bank, with the banks name printed on. The type that stores would refuse to accept if there were rumours. The type that would be worthless when there was a run on the bank. The type where people lost their livelihood, with no central bank to step in and save them. Having a face value of silver or gold meant nothing.
You make some interesting arguments about restructuring, which should ideally be a policy of the government in times of a recession. But the problem with deflation is that it has no negative feedback, so the market doesn't just fall back to a stable state, but continues to deflate.
really? So how do you then explain the enormous rise of overall wealth in the society of US in the 19 century, which was on the gold standard and yet turned the economy from agricultural, where people used to be subsistence farmers, kids used to work on farms from age 4-5, women used to be baby making machines, people used to have money for like a month after the harvest only, there were no machines to help, there was no indoor plumbing, the food was scarce and expensive, so was clothing and energy, the medical treatment was unachievable etc.etc.
How do you explain that throughout the 19 century the quality of life of the entire population was raised so dramatically, that only 5% of population was needed to feed 100%, that there was actual formation of middle class through appearance of all the professionals such as engineers, accountants, medical workers? What about the cultural changes, where eventually the labor became less intense, the child mortality fell by 3/4, where children eventually weren't sent by their parents to work either in the fields OR in the factories, where women gained ability to become independently wealthy and were no longer baby making slaves, where people gained access to indoor plumbing, the food became cheap, abundant and safe due to the free market inventions, such as the refrigeration and canning, the medical professionals became accessible and they had enough competition among themselves that the prices fell so much, everybody was paying out of pocket to see doctors, insurance formed and people were able to buy insurance since 1850 extremely cheaply? How about the machines that the free market created, what about communications and new types of energy (steam - electrical - gas/oil and internal combustion), the cars? the airplanes? Radio and phones? washing machines? Vacuum cleaners? Sewing machines? etc. All of these things were possible due to free market and not to gov't, and all of those things first came out expensive and very quickly became cheaper?
Two words: bank notes (real ones, not the legal tender kind). As for this hypothetical 19th century gold standard: there was none. Silver was the metal of choice. Only at the end of the century did the world move to gold.
the actual poorer people and the middle class do not suffer from falling prices, they get more purchasing power through falling prices.
The more immediate effect of deflation is economic recession, unemployment and lower wages. Consumer prices trail behind on the downward slope.
Without inflation the a majority of people would become destiute, as interest rates would slowly accumulate all the money with the wealthy. Growth would stagnate (by definition) and prices would deflate.
3. Borrowing - taxing society in the future, with interest on top of that - pushing the problem to the future generations.
Interestingly, being a highly credible debtor, the most efficient state for a government to be in is slightly in debt. Of course it's not quite that simple but that's another chapter.
By doing these things the gov't is punishing the savers through taking away their money they worked for either directly (taxes) or indirectly (inflation + borrowing, which is also taxes and interest)
That is also necessary to discourage hoarding and encourage economic activity and investment.
Growth isn't a direct measure for economic health. Ireland did experience unprecedented growth and wage increases, but that was also because they were so far behind in the first place.
The goal is a sustainable growth in the economy. The thing is much of the Irish growth was self-referential, such as the boom in the construction industry.
The Bible gives precise family trees and ages from creation right down to historical times. So one can easily backtrack conclude a precise date for creation, within a reasonable amount of error.
To Murdoch it's all about media presence. Back in the nineties he cut the price of The Times by half within a week, heavily undercutting any competition and running at heavy losses. He couldn't really care shit about profitability. For every Times subscriber there are a hundred Sky TV subscribers shoving cash up his ass.
We save daylight. People live by the clock and working schedules are fixed. They're programmed to get up for work, stay for fixed hours, get home have some supper, wait for their favourite TV shows to finish and that tells them when to go to bed. Getting up earlier is hardly an option and it is very difficult to adjust a daily routine if nobody else does. So after-hours daylight is much appreciated.
The real problem is the midnight clock. If we had the day begin at dawn, like our ancestors have done for millennia before us then there would be no need for the DST hack to make our daily schedule bearable.
But the benefits are undeniable: reduced road fatalities, higher uptake of sports and excercise, reduction of mental illness and barbecues.
DST reduces road accidents. And I'm not talking some hypothetical bullshit, but a significant reduction year after year that saves thousands of lives annually. I'll stick with the incredible complexity of time-shifted software thank you very much.
It's not just a US thing. MPEGLA holds patents throughout the developed world and demands fees in pretty much every jurisdiction with a working patent system.
I have never agreed with the people that attempted to argue, in my mind unsuccessfully, that the H.264 standard was not open source. I believe H.264 is open source and admit that a few companies have proprietary H.264 codecs. And of course there is always X.264, which even the proprietary tools can not take away and call close source.
H.264 is a standard, not software, so it doesn't have any source. And it isn't open because the specification has over-bearing license restrictions with legally dubious claims and demand high fees. That makes x.264 (in it's current form and distribution method) illegal, and the MPEGLA could shut it down whenever they like. As it happens to be on of few decent encoders out there they seem to be tolerating the project, and only targeting people with business interests.
The "little guy inventor" idea seems to be rather distant from the reality of IP law. Most of the time it seems to be the case that the big company uses it's IP to crush competitors and startup ideas.
Slashdot Mirror
And, what does that have to do with the fact that Wikileaks has deleted all information from the site that is not directly about the United States. Did you miss that part or are you too stupid to read?
If you didn't have less intellectual capacity than a turnip you wouldn't jump to conclusions based on your fanciful interpretations.
People like you were accusing such conspiracies last time round too, until the documents were put back up within a few weeks.
The fact is that the site has had hosting problems due to the huge amount of interest it has generated and is undergoing some severe restructuring.
Sure. 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008. And, I can name one for the future: 2012.
Lol. If you think pompous speeches and defamations that go on in the mainstream media or even congress for that matter count as foreign policy I really do pity you.
The elected officials are not authoritarian, therefore your question is moot.
Hitler won elections too you know. Some characteristics of authoritarianism: exclusive and unaccountable. That pretty much seems to completely characterize American foreign policy.
And, no one is demanding complete secrecy.
Well, you are for one. As well as everyone else who calls for severe punishment and condemnation of the sources and journalists rather than the crooked officials they exposes.
You, however, seem to be demanding a seat at every diplomatic discussion and to be CC on every single communication within the government.
Ironically it was the intelligence community that demanded this and that's what caused this whole fiasco in the first place.
No, I wouldn't want to eliminate highly trusted interpersonal communication (you're extremely naive if you believe these leaked documents contain such highly sensitive stuff). But, unlike you, when information does leak and crooks are exposed I don't think that assumed confidentiality can be a defence.
You do not address the primary statement in my post, namely that the only reason these cables were released was to embarrass the U.S. and damage the international relationships of the U.S.
I considered it unnecessary flamebait on your behalf. How schizophrenic must one be to believe such shit? Assange released information which is highly useful for U.S. citizens. The Pentagons anti-democratic with-us-or-against-us mentality would like to steer your thoughts elsewhere of course
The fact that the only data on Wikileaks involves the U.S. is strong evidence of same.
It's actually pretty shitty evidence for your assertion. Anybody the least bit informed would know that the big releases over this last year originated from one source and there has been considerable effort to involve large journals in releasing this bulk of information.
And, where are the documents from France, Russia, China, etc? Or do we not need more open debate about THEIR geopolitical goals and intentions?
We certainly do. But the fact is that France's foreign policy is not a colossal authoritarian game of chess like the US has. Russia and China seem to keep their secrets better.
As for your last paragraph, let me know when you get a chance to discuss alliances with a foreign head of state. The fact is we elect a government to do those very things.
Really now! Can you even name me one American election in which foreign policy was a primary concern?
Are you demanding secrecy after the authoritarian officials have been elected? Because that is highly anti-democratic.
Oh come on! Do you seriously think that the unflattering comments by junior diplomats about a few numbskull politicians who have certainly heard worse are really going to damage diplomatic ties?
What is far more interesting is the insight we get into US diplomacy. These will certainly be some of the most extensive historical documents ever released.
There are basically two approaches: a closed and secretive foreign policy or an open and democratic one. If you believe that wars and alliances are something best left exclusively to Presidents and ministers then you'll oppose Wikileaks, but if you think we need more open debate about our geopolitical goals an intentions, you will support Assange and Wikileaks.
It's a perfectly correct analysis, especially when you're talking about cannibalising sales. It doesn't address the numerous shortcomings that Apple keep incrementally improving functionality to that which is taken for granted in this day and age.
Do you really think I am this dense, that I do not KNOW that gold standard does not preclude banks from lending out deposits and only holding fractions? Seriously? For real?
That's not what I meant. You seem to be under the impression that for every Dollar in circulation in 1850 there was a dollars worth of silver locked up in a safe. That certainly was not the case.
Your fanciful re-imagining of 19th century banking doesn't change this.
Isn't this a gigantic fallacy on your part, not knowing anything about me or about my investments to come with this 'conclusion'?
Would you then care to explain how a gold market crash would not only devalue your gold deposits but also render some of the questionably viable gold mining operations that exist unprofitable?
Would you care to explain why mining companies are inherently safer than any other business?
you should definitely teach me, oh the great one. Did you own any Internet stocks in the nineties? I didn't. I guess I was the silly one then as well. However those people who did, lost pretty much all of it while my commodities only went up in value.
Considering you see you success by speculation in the housing bubble to be a paramount example of your wisdom, maybe you should have bought some and sold them when they were high.
I guess me noticing that to get out of that recession the gov't did the wrong thing and pushed the interest rates to 1%, I guess I was wrong then, to understand that it would cause another, bigger bubble in real estate? I guess the fact that I bought 3 houses in the beginning of two thousand, renovated them, held onto them and sold them pretty much before the housing bubble blew up and loaded up on gold again, yeah, that makes me totally ignorant on the way the inflation by government causes asset bubbles.
Having won one round of speculation might boost your confidence but it sure as hell doesn't mean you're right. The very fact that gold is seen as a safe reserve allows it to withstand stock market crashes.
So while it does have some interesting peculiarities, that doesn't mean the gold price can't bubble and crash.
Gold standard != 100% reserved currency. This seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding you have. The 19th cenury banking system was based on fractional reserves as was any serious attempt at banking in modern times. We had a gold-standard up until 1972. But, just as in the 19th century there is no way that all wealth corresponded to gold coins that were locked up somewhere.
I can't begin to conceive what naive thinking makes you believe that constantly falling prices are a macroeconomic benefit.
You also seem to be drastically misinformed about the nature of gold mining shares. While one might naively assume the price of a mining company to rise as gold prices rise, the company doesn't actually represent any metal beyond it's current inventory. The actual value of the company depends on the profitability of the mining operation itself as well as how mining rights are awarded and will be awarded in the future. Guess who gets to decide this? Yep, it's a big bad government. The mining sector is by no means a safe industry to invest in.
The 101 of financial investment is to distribute your assets across diverse industries to resist sector crashes.
Holding on to gold while the rest of the world is out investing in the future sure isn't the safest thing to do. If you want to compare historical gold prices you really have to look at inflation or CPI-adjusted charts like this one: http://www.financialsensearchive.com/metals/cpiadjusted.html
If that's something you want to bet your entire livelihood on then all I can do is wish you luck.
What the heck are you talking about that there can be no real growth of economy without fractional reserve?
Fractional reserve banking creates money for every loan people take, with the assumption that there is a chance that loan will result in positive investment, creating new goods.
Take away the ability to loan money and fix your currency to a near-static commodity like gold, then there is no way to expand the money supply to value the newly created goods. Instead it drains money from a previously balanced economy. The People all clamour for the same pot of gold which can only grow at the mining rate for gold (and also btw. happens to be hugely dependant on the matrimonal situation on the indian subcontinent) rather than making investments without worrying about an arbitrary metal.
As to you suggestion we could replace the entire financial system with direct personal investment deals for every citizen, that's just bat-shit-crazy.
Well, those were banks that loaned out the gold, they had fractional reserve of gold, they were not safe boxes in the real sense of the word.
Exactly. Which is why your notion that
19th century economy = fully reserved liquid assets
is completely bullshit. Without fractional reserve banking there can be not interest rates and no bank loans. Heck, there would hardly be a reason for banks to exist.
The point is that the 19th century currencies worked a lot like they do now. Except that you had to worry about the market of some metals along with all the other factors.
But in reality the bank runs were a very small problem, this problem was overblown by the US gov't, when they introduced the FDIC to help their banking friends to get more customers, that was helping the banking monopolies to hold on to the market with less competition and without having to earn the trust of the people. That was the moral hazard, which became part of the reason for the latest financial crash, since the Steagall was removed but FDIC stayed in place.
Wait a second. You argue against fiat money because of it's supposed instability, and then suggest we take back measures that stabilise the system and allow banks to decide their reserves for themselves?
Extremes are always bad. There's a good balance between money being bad to save and money being bad to spend. Generally it's around 2%, about the same as economic growth.
Bank notes are backed by gold or whatever commodity you prefer, like silver or corn or cotton.
The point is that you can't print cotton or corn or silver or gold. First of all there is real work involved in actually producing/mining these commodities, secondly they cannot be produced/mined without restrained, that's just not happening.
Cash, on the other hand, can be printed without any limits and it is.
You are mistaken. I'm talking about the typical 19th century bank note. The type you got from a particular bank, with the banks name printed on. The type that stores would refuse to accept if there were rumours. The type that would be worthless when there was a run on the bank. The type where people lost their livelihood, with no central bank to step in and save them.
Having a face value of silver or gold meant nothing.
You make some interesting arguments about restructuring, which should ideally be a policy of the government in times of a recession. But the problem with deflation is that it has no negative feedback, so the market doesn't just fall back to a stable state, but continues to deflate.
really? So how do you then explain the enormous rise of overall wealth in the society of US in the 19 century, which was on the gold standard and yet turned the economy from agricultural, where people used to be subsistence farmers, kids used to work on farms from age 4-5, women used to be baby making machines, people used to have money for like a month after the harvest only, there were no machines to help, there was no indoor plumbing, the food was scarce and expensive, so was clothing and energy, the medical treatment was unachievable etc.etc.
How do you explain that throughout the 19 century the quality of life of the entire population was raised so dramatically, that only 5% of population was needed to feed 100%, that there was actual formation of middle class through appearance of all the professionals such as engineers, accountants, medical workers? What about the cultural changes, where eventually the labor became less intense, the child mortality fell by 3/4, where children eventually weren't sent by their parents to work either in the fields OR in the factories, where women gained ability to become independently wealthy and were no longer baby making slaves, where people gained access to indoor plumbing, the food became cheap, abundant and safe due to the free market inventions, such as the refrigeration and canning, the medical professionals became accessible and they had enough competition among themselves that the prices fell so much, everybody was paying out of pocket to see doctors, insurance formed and people were able to buy insurance since 1850 extremely cheaply? How about the machines that the free market created, what about communications and new types of energy (steam - electrical - gas/oil and internal combustion), the cars? the airplanes? Radio and phones? washing machines? Vacuum cleaners? Sewing machines? etc. All of these things were possible due to free market and not to gov't, and all of those things first came out expensive and very quickly became cheaper?
Two words: bank notes (real ones, not the legal tender kind).
As for this hypothetical 19th century gold standard: there was none. Silver was the metal of choice. Only at the end of the century did the world move to gold.
the actual poorer people and the middle class do not suffer from falling prices, they get more purchasing power through falling prices.
The more immediate effect of deflation is economic recession, unemployment and lower wages. Consumer prices trail behind on the downward slope.
Where else do you suggest money be created?
1. Inflation - expanding the monetary supply.
Without inflation the a majority of people would become destiute, as interest rates would slowly accumulate all the money with the wealthy. Growth would stagnate (by definition) and prices would deflate.
3. Borrowing - taxing society in the future, with interest on top of that - pushing the problem to the future generations.
Interestingly, being a highly credible debtor, the most efficient state for a government to be in is slightly in debt. Of course it's not quite that simple but that's another chapter.
By doing these things the gov't is punishing the savers through taking away their money they worked for either directly (taxes) or indirectly (inflation + borrowing, which is also taxes and interest)
That is also necessary to discourage hoarding and encourage economic activity and investment.
Growth isn't a direct measure for economic health. Ireland did experience unprecedented growth and wage increases, but that was also because they were so far behind in the first place.
The goal is a sustainable growth in the economy. The thing is much of the Irish growth was self-referential, such as the boom in the construction industry.
The Bible gives precise family trees and ages from creation right down to historical times. So one can easily backtrack conclude a precise date for creation, within a reasonable amount of error.
To Murdoch it's all about media presence. Back in the nineties he cut the price of The Times by half within a week, heavily undercutting any competition and running at heavy losses. He couldn't really care shit about profitability. For every Times subscriber there are a hundred Sky TV subscribers shoving cash up his ass.
http://tinyurl.com/DSTtraffic
Laziness is not a valid reason for skepticism. Go fuck yourself.
We save daylight. People live by the clock and working schedules are fixed. They're programmed to get up for work, stay for fixed hours, get home have some supper, wait for their favourite TV shows to finish and that tells them when to go to bed. Getting up earlier is hardly an option and it is very difficult to adjust a daily routine if nobody else does. So after-hours daylight is much appreciated.
The real problem is the midnight clock. If we had the day begin at dawn, like our ancestors have done for millennia before us then there would be no need for the DST hack to make our daily schedule bearable.
But the benefits are undeniable: reduced road fatalities, higher uptake of sports and excercise, reduction of mental illness and barbecues.
DST reduces road accidents. And I'm not talking some hypothetical bullshit, but a significant reduction year after year that saves thousands of lives annually. I'll stick with the incredible complexity of time-shifted software thank you very much.
For $19.99 it had fucking better.
WTF? There is absolutely nothing to opine about it.
You seem to be under the misconception that open basically means non-secret. It doesn't. H.264 is a video standard. It is not an open standard.
x264 is an for the standard. It is open-source in the sense that the developers don't demand fees for the software.
It's not just a US thing. MPEGLA holds patents throughout the developed world and demands fees in pretty much every jurisdiction with a working patent system.
I have never agreed with the people that attempted to argue, in my mind unsuccessfully, that the H.264 standard was not open source. I believe H.264 is open source and admit that a few companies have proprietary H.264 codecs. And of course there is always X.264, which even the proprietary tools can not take away and call close source.
H.264 is a standard, not software, so it doesn't have any source. And it isn't open because the specification has over-bearing license restrictions with legally dubious claims and demand high fees. That makes x.264 (in it's current form and distribution method) illegal, and the MPEGLA could shut it down whenever they like. As it happens to be on of few decent encoders out there they seem to be tolerating the project, and only targeting people with business interests.
Sony really drove the Walkman brand into the ground with their MP3 an NetMD players. For many years they were just horribly inferior products
The "little guy inventor" idea seems to be rather distant from the reality of IP law. Most of the time it seems to be the case that the big company uses it's IP to crush competitors and startup ideas.